


The Things We Bring With Us

by writingtothestars



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Alex Mercer Has Anxiety (Julie and the Phantoms), F/M, Gen, Hard of Hearing Reggie Peters (Julie and The Phantoms), Julie is the positive friend we all need, Luke Patterson has eczema (Julie and The Phantoms), M/M, because I'm projecting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:40:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29411352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingtothestars/pseuds/writingtothestars
Summary: It seemed like one more cruel joke that the universe was playing on them – the fact that he could still somehow have eczema, that Alex could still struggle with anxiety, and that Reggie still had to wear his hearing aids. He wasn’t sure what he had imagined his afterlife would be like, but he certainly hadn’t pictured it being so similar to the seventeen years he had lived before the hotdogs.
Relationships: (kinda) - Relationship, Alex Mercer/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms), Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 8
Kudos: 80





	1. Of Cracking Skin on Guitar Strings

**Author's Note:**

> I constantly see memes about how the biggest struggle of JATP is Luke vs. shirts with sleeves, and as someone who has eczema, I really felt that. Anyway, I decided to project the feelings I have about my skin on to Luke, because his lack of sleeves gave me the opportunity to make a new headcannon. TW for blood being mentioned once very briefly, and also for the mentions of Luke's skin cracking and hurting.

The longer that Luke was dead, the more he realized how little he understood about being a ghost. Alex had been right when he said that the afterlife needed some sort of instruction manual. The three of them kept coming up with questions that no one could answer. Personally, Luke would have liked an audience with whoever sat in the seat of the universe so that he could demand answers. Like, why had they spent twenty-five years in a dark room while Alex cried? How come only Julie could see them, but everyone could see them when they played music?

And most importantly, how was is possible to have skin problems as a ghost?

It seemed like one more cruel joke that the universe was playing on them – the fact that he could still somehow have eczema, that Alex could still struggle with anxiety, and that Reggie still had to wear his hearing aids. He wasn’t sure what he had imagined his afterlife would be like, but he certainly hadn’t pictured it being so similar to the seventeen years he had lived before the hotdogs.

Luke’s skin had always been dry. Almost all of his shirts irritated it, so he had chopped off all his sleeves. The backs of his hands were the worst, but there was nothing that mutilating his shirts could do for that. His mom had taken him to the doctor, who had told him to lather them in lotion and sleep with a special pair of gloves. It helped a little.

But then he had run away, and the last thing on his mind had been those stupid gloves. His fingers throbbed and his skin split. He tried to cover his hands with an old pair of socks when he slept, but it wasn’t the same. His skin worsened. Before he had died, his eczema had spread to the pads of his fingers and the palms of his hands, turning them into a cracked desert of itching and aching. He started to realize that playing the guitar was good for a lot of things, but cracking skin was not one of them. Thank God for the band-aids and lotion that Alex kept in his fanny pack.

His skin hadn’t been _that_ bad the night they had died. Seeing that his eczema had followed him into the afterlife had been an unwelcomed surprise – a surprise that became even more unwelcomed after his hands started to get worse.

“I don’t understand,” Alex said as he wrapped a band-aid around one of Luke’s knuckles. “You’re dead. Shouldn’t your skin be healed? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Has anything about our deaths made sense?”

Alex sighed. “Fair point.”

“Maybe we should tell Julie,” Reggie suggested.

Alex finished sealing the band-aid on Luke’s finger. It was so tight that he couldn’t bend it. He should have been worried about losing his circulation, but he was more focused on how he was going to be able to play certain chords.

“Why? I don’t think she can help,” Luke said, holding up his hand to inspect Alex’s work. He patted the drummer on the back. “Thanks, buddy.”

“I agree with Reggie, actually –“

Reggie laughed, bouncing up from where he had been lying on the couch. “Wait, you actually agree with my idea? Never thought I would see the day when _that_ happened!”

“You do have the occasional good idea, Reg,” Alex admitted.

“ _Occasional_ ,” Luke emphasized.

“But I do think that maybe we should talk to Julie,” Alex continued. “What happens when I run out of band-aids?”

“We sneak into the house and steal some.”

“No! We’re not going to steal, Luke. We’ll just have to ask her for more.”

Luke groaned, already picturing himself struggling to explain to Julie why a ghost would need a band-aid. “Why do you have to make everything so hard?”

“Dude, she’s letting us live here. The least we can do is not steal from her –“

“Alex, it’s a band-aid!”

“You could always just steal some from the store,” Reggie suggested.

“No!” Alex covered his face and groaned, exasperated. “I _hate_ being the responsible one. This is supposed to be Bobby’s job!”

It was agreed that Luke wouldn’t steal any band-aids from the Molina’s house, or the store, or anybody, for that matter. But that didn’t stop Luke from considering stealing something else.

He hadn’t told Alex and Reggie about his visits to his parents; that was a conversation that he wasn’t ready to have. They would worry about him – or worse, try to follow him – and he didn’t want that to be one more thing on everyone’s plate. The visits were for himself. Sure, he mostly just watched his parents, but he didn’t want his time with them to become a shared event. Not to mention that he was now making a point of looking for his old cotton gloves while he was there, and he did _not_ need a lecture from Alex about why he shouldn’t take something that used to be his.

His hands kept getting worse, and his arms weren’t doing so great. When he ran his fingertips together, he could feel every ridge and every crack on his skin, a desert that itched and burned and _hurt_. He was worried that Julie would see, or that Alex and Reggie would get worried about him and tell her. It was stupid, he knew, but the way his hands looked and felt made him nervous.

When he had been younger, there had been a point when his hands were so bad that people at school shied away, afraid to make contact with him. People saw his blistering hands with the blood set in the cracks and grimaced after having to sit too close to him, or, God forbid, touch something that he had touched. He could still see the way people cringed after he borrowed a pencil, shaking their heads and saying, “ _No, you can keep it_ ”, afraid that they would catch something from him. Luke didn’t know what he would do with himself if Julie looked at him that way.

His flannel shirts had escaped the wrath of his scissors, being the only fabric that he could stand to have touching his arms. He wore them more and more often, using the long sleeves to cover his hands so that Julie couldn’t see how red and cracked his hands were.

“You’ve got to tell her, man,” Reggie said. He sat on top of the piano, watching as Luke applied to last of Alex’s band-aids to his fingers.

“No.”

“But you’re out of band-aids and lotion,” Reggie said. “If you tell Julie what’s up, I’m sure that she can get more for you. Maybe she could even get you some of that lotion that’s made specifically for eczema!”

Memories of past classmates flinching away from him flashed across Luke’s vision. “No, I’m not telling Julie –“

“Telling Julie what?”

Julie stood in the doorway of the studio, watching them. She still wore her backpack, so she couldn’t have been standing there very long. She raised her eyebrows at the boys when they all froze. “Tell me what?”

“Nothing.” Luke pulled his hands away from Alex and pulled his sleeves down to cover them.

“Tell me what?” Julie repeated, her voice walking a fine line between concerned and a tone of strictness that Luke was used to hearing only from adults. She dropped her backpack and stepped into the studio, watching them all carefully. “What did you guys do? Are you still messing with Carlos, because Tía –“

Luke picked up his guitar and slipped the strap over his head. “Don’t worry, Julie, nothing happened. We’re not in trouble.”

The singer started to speak again, and from the corner of his eye, Luke saw Alex and Reggie shake their heads. _Drop it._

“Fine,” Julie said, her tone lighter but still tense. She grabbed her microphone and headed for the piano bench. After a quick run-though of some scales, she smiled at the boys. “Ready? I was thinking we could start with _Finally Free_.”

The boys let Julie lead them through a few songs, but Luke was distracted by the smarting in his fingers. He would have assumed that the calluses on his fingers would hold up against his guitar strings, but the cracks on his fingers stung as they played through their set. It was enough of a distraction to cause him to wince and stumble over lyrics, which he almost never did, not even on his worst days.

The band-aid on his pointer finger had loosened while Luke played. His finger was easier to move, but as he bent his finger to change chords, he felt a painful sting that he wasn’t prepared for.

Luke cursed into the microphone, his words echoing through the studio.

Julie shot him a worried glance as she sang. Her voice faltered and she pulled her fingers away from the piano keys. The sound of Reggie and Alex’s instruments tapered off shortly after, leaving Luke trapped in a quiet studio with everyone staring at him.

“Those are some . . . interesting new lyrics,” Julie noted.

His hands stung. Instinctively, he rolled his sleeve back a little to inspect the damage. The rest of the band followed his gaze.

“Oh my God!” Julie jumped up from the piano bench. She rushed to Luke’s side and moved to take his hand. He was only able to jerk it away because his hand passed right through hers. He had never been so grateful to be made of air. “Luke, your hands! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he grimaced, trying to hide them from her view.

Reggie appeared behind him, and his gentle hands took hold of Luke’s arm. He held out Luke’s hands for Julie’s inspection.

Julie sucked in a breath. “Ow.”

His hands were red and angry, and watching her react to them made his eyes sting. Her expression wasn’t anything near those of old classmates – Julie’s eyes held nothing but concern – but still, he didn’t want her to think that he was gross, or that he had some kind of disease.

“Do you need a band-aid?” Julie asked. “Disinfectant?” She tried to take his hand again. She wasn’t afraid.

But he _was_ afraid – afraid of what she might secretly think of his hands. It was all too much.

He poofed out.

His parents weren’t home. Sometimes his mom went out to lunch with her friends and his dad ran errands. When they were gone, Luke usually just wandered through the house, taking note of what had changed and what had stayed the same after all those years.

But not that day; Luke was on a mission.

He was going to find those gloves if it was the last thing he did.

His old room hadn’t changed much. A lot of his things had been packed up in boxes and shoved into the closet or the garage, but most of the room stood unchanged, like a time capsule that stood still throughout time, displaying the memories of his life for the days when his parents needed to be reminded of their son.

Luke was so upset that he couldn’t focus all of his energy into his hands. They passed through the handles of his dresser drawers, not letting him open them or take anything from inside. They phased through the boxes stacked in his closet. He was vibrating he was so upset, but none of that energy wanted to stay in his hands.

“Damn it!” He flopped down onto his bed, buried his head in his pillow, and screamed. He was crying. When was the last time he had cried?

The last time he could remember crying that hard had been during his freshman year of high school. His gym class had done a dance unit in which all the boys were required to dance with a girl. Luke had been pumped. The girl he had been crushing on was in that class, and picking her for his dance partner had seemed like the perfect way to make his move.

He had offered her his hand. She had taken it with a smile, only to recoil in horror.

“Your hands!” she had yelped, pulling her own away. “They’re so dry! What’s wrong with them?”

Nothing was wrong with them. He had tried to explain that to her, but it was useless. She was afraid of catching something from him if she had to hold his hand for long periods of time.

“You can’t catch eczema,” Luke had assured her. “It’s not contagious.”

She had made such an upset of it all that the gym teacher allowed her to switch partners. By that point, everyone knew about Luke’s dry hands, and none of the girls wanted to touch him. He had ended up partnering with Reggie, who was the only one who wasn’t afraid of catching eczema.

Luke had locked himself in his room after school that day and cried for hours. He was positive that no one was ever going to want to hold his hand, to touch him. That was what he was afraid of with Julie. He couldn’t even touch her, but if he somehow could, she would never want to hold his rough, cracking hands.

Remembering the experience brought a wave of emotion over Luke. He screamed into his pillow again before flinging it across the room in anger. It hit the door of his closet, which had been slightly ajar, and slammed it shut.

Somewhere in the house, another door shut. He could hear footsteps outside his door. A second later, it opened and his mom poked her head into the room, eyes wide.

She looked around. Her eyes studied the bed, with its comforter in disarray from where he had been lying on it. She looked toward the closet, her eyes settling on the pillow that had slammed into the door. She stepped into the room. “Luke?”

For a moment, he forgot that she couldn’t see him.

“Mom,” he said. He held up his hands to show her his cracked, itchy skin. “Mom, please help me.”

His mom was still staring at the pillow, trying to work out how it had flown across the room. Her hands came up to cover her mouth. She rushed out of the room.

“Mom, wait!” Luke cried, still forgetting that there was no way that she could see or hear him.

Emily had retreated into the living room. She sat on the couch and took up her knitting, the needles flying with a ferocity that Luke had only seen used after their fights. The clacking sound of the needles calmed her, but she focused only on them. Every now and then she whispered something to herself and shook her head, like she could forget what she had seen if she threw herself into her work.

Luke stood in front of her, still crying. _She can’t see me_ , he realized.

He sat on the arm of the couch that was farthest from her, watching her work. He pulled his knees up to his chest and buried his head between them. “God, I wish you could see me. I wish you could help me like you used to!”

He balled his hand into a fist and felt the skin crack across his knuckles. The day that his crush had rejected him because of his skin, he vowed to never leave his room again. His mom had convinced him to at least unlock his bedroom door so that she could bring him dinner.

“You found me crying on my bed,” Luke remembered aloud. He slid off the couch so that he was sitting on the floor, looking up at his mom. He wished he could rest his head on her lap, but he settled for leaning it against the edge of the couch instead. “The boys told you what had happened. I was embarrassed.”

She continued counting her stitches under her breath.

“I felt stupid. But you held me, and you told me that there was nothing wrong with my skin. You said that someday, someone would want to hold my hand, regardless of the fact that my skin felt like sandpaper.” His voice cracked. “Why can’t it be like that now? Why can’t you hug me like you used to, and tell me that everything will be okay?”

“Knit one, two, three, four, knit two together . . .”

“I never stopped needing you. I’m sorry if I ever made you feel otherwise.”

“ . . . one, two, three –“

Luke buried his face in his hands. “I wish you could hear me. I wish you could give me some sort of sign that you know how much I need you.”

“Purl one, two, three . . .”

He squeezed his eyes shut and poofed out.

He only opened his eyes after he felt the studio couch appear underneath him. Rough skin scratched his face as he wiped his eyes. Alex and Reggie were nowhere to be seen, which was fine – he needed to be alone – but then he looked up and saw –

“Julie!” Luke scrambled back on the couch, despite the fact that the singer hadn’t even moved.

She studied him intently, worry creasing her brow.

“You’re still here,” Luke said. “Where’d the boys go?”

“I told them that we needed some space,” Julie explained. She shifted closer to him. “Luke, why didn’t you tell me that you were in pain?”

_Emotional or physical?_ He wanted to ask.

She looked beautiful, sitting across from him. Sunlight was streaming in from the window behind her, illuminating her in a halo of warmth that made her soft skin glow. Luke knew that she was at least a little upset with him, whether she admitted it or not, but all he could focus on was how pretty she was. He looked between her and his cracked hands.

Julie was so pretty, and his hands . . . they were so _not_ pretty. Surely she wouldn’t be as mean as the girls in his gym class, but she would never want to hold his hand.

“I didn’t want you to think . . .” He couldn’t find the words. How could he explain it? “I didn’t want you to be grossed out.”

“Why would I be grossed out? It’s just eczema. It’s not like it’s contagious, or anything.”

Luke glanced down at his hands again. They itched like crazy and they pained him when he moved his fingers. They were red and rough, and when the weather got bad, his arms matched them. Could he trust her to understand how bad that made him feel about himself?

“People see it and they treat me like some sort of leper,” Luke explained. “It just makes me feel really bad about myself. Alex and Reggie don’t mind my skin because we’ve been friends for so long, but I was afraid of seeing how you would react.”

Her face softened. She reached out to take his hands, but they passed right through him.

_She’s not afraid_ , Luke thought, his heart tapping out a surprised rhythm of staccatos. _She’s not afraid to touch my hand!_ He didn’t even mind the fact that he was made of air and that she hadn’t been able to actually touch him, it was just the fact that she had tried.

Julie gave up on trying to take his hand. She offered him a smile and turned toward the sofa table, where a bottle of Eucerin sat beside a pair of cotton gloves. “Carlos has eczema. It’s pretty tame, but sometimes it really bothers him. I don’t think he’d mind sharing his lotion if it’s going toward a good cause.”

“Won’t he notice that his stuff is missing?”

Julie laughed. “Dad keeps so much lotion and spare gloves stocked up that you’d think we were preparing for the apocalypse. Trust me when I say that no one will notice a bottle going missing every now and then.”

The thought of Carolos accidentally aiding and abetting the ghosts that he was always hunting made Luke chuckle. He would just have to make sure to store the lotion somewhere so that Carlos wouldn’t notice it when he came into the studio to snoop around.

Julie held out the bottle and the gloves. “Let me know if you need more, or anything else. Or if this isn’t the right brand, I could always go to the pharmacy myself –“

“Geez, you sound like Alex,” Luke teased.

“I actually gave him some extras to keep in his fanny pack.”

Luke’s hands were shaking, but he managed to focus his energy just enough to squeeze some lotion from the bottle and slip the gloves onto his hands. The lotion bit at his skin, but the relief it brought was unlike anything he had felt in far too long.

“Thank you, Julie,” he said. “Like, really. _Thank you_.”

She smiled. “You’re welcome. But no more secrets, okay?”

He saluted her. “Sure thing, Captain.”

“I’m your friend,” Julie reminded him. “And I would never judge you, or the boys, for anything.”

“No more secrets,” he promised, although he could think of one that he wasn’t ready to share yet – how badly he wanted to hold her hand.


	2. Concerto of Regrets in A Major

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you I could play the piano,” Alex apologized. “I know we said no more secrets, but I was afraid. Which is stupid, because it’s not even, like, a big secret. It shouldn’t have even been a secret in the first place, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what might happen if I told you.”
> 
> “I think maybe we need to redefine what ‘secret’ means, because Luke and Reggie keep telling me all kinds of things that aren’t my business.” She fixed him with a serious look. “Did you know that when Reggie was little, his head was so big that scientists did experiments on him?”
> 
> Alex laughed. Maybe letting Reggie catch up on all the years of tv shows they had missed had been a bad idea. “That’s not a secret; just Reggie being Reggie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for the really nice reactions to the last chapter :') I was honestly super worried about how people would react to it.
> 
> TW for Alex having anxiety
> 
> Gold star is you spot the Parks and Rec reference

In a way, drumming had set Alex free. It was his chance to let loose. It was easy to let his worries and thoughts fall away as the beat took over. There was no better way to relieve stress than banging on his drum set. But music hadn’t always been like that for him. Drumming had been a way of rebelling against the role the musical part of his life had become trapped in.

Even in death, Alex worried about becoming trapped in his old role.

There were days when he missed being alive, days when he would have given anything to go back to his old life, no matter how bad it had sometimes been. But then memories flooded in, and he would remember how much he used to hate music, and he would vow that he would never let things go back to the way they used to be.

He missed aspects of it, that much he could admit.

He usually waited until he was certain that no one else was around before he allowed himself to even think about playing the piano. Sometimes he would play for Reggie, who liked to lay across the top of the piano like a cat and feel the vibrations as Alex banged out some Mozart or Bach. That was the exception.

It wasn’t that Alex didn’t trust Julie. How could he not trust her after everything she had done for them? Besides; he had seen how calmly she had reacted to Luke’s eczema, and there was no reason for him to believe that she wouldn’t be supportive of his choice to not play the piano publicly . . . but one can never know how people will react to a confession, no matter how well you think you know them.

He hadn’t even told Willie that he could play.

It was a secret that Alex had quite literally brought to the grave, and he didn’t plan on disclosing it to anyone besides his friends – just not his new ones.

It was late in the morning. Ray was at work, Carlos and Julie were at school, and Luke was visiting his parents. Reggie was sitting on top of his amp, changing the strings on his banjo. The bassist was the one person that Alex truly didn’t mind playing in front of.

“Hey.” Alex nudged Reggie’s foot to get his attention. “Do you mind if I . . .” He nodded toward the piano.

Reggie smiled. “Nah man, go ahead. You won’t bother me.”

“Thanks.”

Alex took a seat on the piano bench and pushed up the fallboard. He cracked his knuckles, ran his fingers over the smooth keys, and sucked in a breath. _Musette in D Major_ began to pluck itself out on the keys. It was an easier tune that Alex never got tired of playing. The repetitiveness of the song was soothing.

But that was how it always started, wasn’t it?

He would begin to play, something light and jaunty that reminded him that he loved music. Slowly, he would move through his repertoire, until the cramping feeling in his neck drove him to distraction. He would re-start whatever piece he was playing as many times as he needed to, unable to feel like he was doing it right, though he could never describe what right was.

Thoughts and memories would begin to spiral in, driving him to distraction. He would feel disgusted with himself for ever quitting – he was so gifted _damn it_ , and _how can you waste a_ _gift?!_ – and his music would grow darker in shades until he was heaving over the keys, unable to play any longer. He would get up from the bench, disgusted, and vow never to play again.

The cycle would continue.

He wasn’t there yet. In that moment, he was still tapping out the lighter songs of his childhood, letting the music transport him to a simpler time. He glanced up in between songs and saw that Reggie had climbed atop the piano at some point. He was smiling, at peace with the world.

Alex wished his music made him feel that way.

 _The Queen of the Night Aria_ found its way onto the keys. His brow furrowed. He hadn’t meant to take that turn. He closed his eyes and frowned, feeling the keys until he felt confident that he could shift into something lighter.

“That was quiet a shift,” Reggie noted as _Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy_ vibrated through the piano.

Alex continued playing. It was an old favorite, one that he knew by heart. He kept his eyes closed as he played.

The end of the song was his favorite. It sped up, taking on an almost frantic quality until suddenly, it stopped on a quick, light note. Alex had always felt that, emotionally, the song was a study in quitting before you spiraled too far, which was what he was trying to do.

The last note of the piece was quick, but Alex smiled with satisfaction when it echoed off the walls every so slightly. He should quit now, while he was ahead –

Applause erupted in front of him. Reggie didn’t usually clap, knowing that it made him uncomfortable.

“Thanks, Reg, but –“ Alex opened his eyes and choked on his words.

Julie stood on the other end of the piano. Her face had broken into a grin, and she was clapping enthusiastically as she watched him.

“Julie!” He stood up so fast that the bench slid back behind him, making an off-key sound as it grinded against the floor. Julie didn’t seem upset with him, and yet, he felt as if he had just been caught doing something that he shouldn’t have been. And while it was his friend standing across the piano from him, he could only see years of anger and disappointment.

“I didn’t know that you could play!” Julie exclaimed.

“I’m sorry,” Alex apologized, shutting the fallboard and almost smashing his fingers in the process. “I, um, I really shouldn’t have. I don’t know why I did it, I –“

Julie’s brow furrowed. “Alex, it’s totally okay. You’re really good!”

Reggie was sitting up by that point, turning his head between his friends as he tried to keep up with what was happening. He echoed Julie’s words, “It’s okay, Alex.”

 _Was it though?_ He had heard that before; those words always came before a private conversation that proved that, no, it really _wasn’t_ okay.

Words tried to form, but he couldn’t force any out. He stood there stammering while his friends looked at him. He shouldn’t have been embarrassed in front of them, but damn, _was the studio getting warmer?_ Julie was looking between him and Reggie. Maybe Reggie could come up with an explanation full of words that Alex was incapable of forming.

“Are you okay?” Julie asked.

Reggie slid off the piano and took a cautious step forward. “Alex?”

He managed to nod. “Yeah, I just . . .” He faltered. “I’m sorry that I didn’t ask you before playing it.”

“You don’t have to ask for permission,” Julie assured him. “You were really good!”

Warmth spread across Alex’s cheeks. He dipped his head to hide his blush. Would she expect him to play for everyone now that she knew about his hidden talent?

Reggie murmured something that Alex couldn’t catch, before shooting him a reassuring smile. “I think you guys should talk. Do you want me to stay?”

Julie offered him an encouraging nod, and Reggie did the same. Alex trusted his friend; Reggie would never leave him in an uncomfortable situation that he didn’t think Alex could handle.

“You can go,” Alex said. _But please stay close_ , he thought it loudly, as if that would make his friend hear his thoughts.

Reggie poofed out, and Julie took a step toward the piano. Without meaning to, Alex took a step back. Julie stopped, took a step back, and clasped her hands in front of her, not sure what to do.

 _This is so awkward_ , Alex realized, wishing that he had asked Reggie to stay with him for moral support. He started to speak at the same time Julie did, which somehow made him feel even worse.

“Sorry,” Julie said. “You first.”

“I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you I could play the piano,” Alex apologized. “I know we said no more secrets, but I was afraid. Which is stupid, because it’s not even, like, a _big_ secret. It shouldn’t have even been a secret in the first place, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what might happen if I told you.”

“I think maybe we need to redefine what ‘ _secret_ ’ means, because Luke and Reggie keep telling me all kinds of things that aren’t my business.” She fixed him with a serious look. “Did you know that when Reggie was little, his head was so big that scientists did experiments on him?”

Alex laughed. Maybe letting Reggie catch up on all the years of tv shows they had missed had been a bad idea. “That’s not a secret; just Reggie being Reggie.”

That brief moment of security had boosted his confidence a little. He sat down on the piano bench and opened the fallboard again. Julie came around the side of the piano and took a seat beside him on the bench. If he didn’t tell her then, she might go the rest of her life wondering why he had never told her, and he would never have the courage to make his confession. It was now or never.

“When I was little,” Alex started. He paused and cleared his throat, immediately worrying that his pause had made the situation awkward again. He started again, “When I was little, all of my mom’s friends started to sign their daughters up for ballet. My mom didn’t want to be left out, I guess, because she signed me up to.”

“Oh.” Julie blinked. “So you’re like, a _dancer_ dancer! Is that why you’re so obsessed with Dirty Candi?”

“Whaaat? I’m not obsessed with them!”

“I beg to differ.”

“I refuse to differ. I am not obsessed with them . . . I just admire their skills.”

Julie rolled her eyes and tried to nudge his shoulder with her own, but she passed right through him. “Okay, you’re not obsessed with them.”

“I’m not,” Alex insisted. “Anyway, my dad thought that ballet would be useful because he wanted to sign me up for the local pee wee football team that fall. He had some whole idea about ballet being good for my technique, or something.

“But I didn’t want to do football, I wanted to dance. That pissed him off, so he made my mom pull me out of the dance studio I had been going to. She wanted to find a new hobby for me, and my parents agreed that becoming a classically trained piano player was a great way to teach me discipline. I think I was eight or nine.”

Julie shook her head. “So I guess this was way before the band. But learning discipline at eight? What does that even mean?”

Alex shrugged. “I don’t know. They were just super strict. I think that was around the time I started experiencing so much anxiety all the time. Playing the piano made me feel so _bad,_ but they didn’t want me to quit. Everyone seemed to think that I was gifted, and that quitting would be throwing that gift away.”

Julie sucked in a breath and shrunk into herself a bit. “Throwing away a gift” was something she had heard too many times.

“When Luke and Bobby got the idea to start a band, I was hesitant. The boys had these dreams of sharing our music with the world, but I didn’t want any part of it if it meant that I would be trapped doing something that I hated for the rest of my life.

“Bobby was the one who suggested that I be the drummer. I thought it was a joke at first. But then we found this old drum set at a garage sale, and the guy who was selling it let me try it out.” He held his hands out in front of him, curling his fingers into fists, and then releasing them. “It felt so . . . different. In a good way. I liked it. It was the first time that I had like creating music in so long. We bought the drums and I agreed to join the band.”

“Bobby,” Julie said quietly. The corner of her lip quirked upward. “Trevor once told me that you couldn’t make a good song without a good drummer, because that’s where the heartbeat of the music is. That heartbeat brings your song to life.”

Something lifted in Alex’s chest. It was a sweet sentiment. He was still mad that one of his oldest friends had taken their music and claimed it as his own, but maybe he hadn’t completely forgotten the other boys of Sunset Curve.

“I told my parents that I wasn’t going to play the piano anymore because it didn’t make me happy. They were furious, of course. But drumming really was something that made me happy. There were no expectations for me when I sat behind a drum set, but there were way too many every time I sat on a piano bench.

“Sometimes I miss it, in a weird way. I start to think that my parents were right and that I did throw away a gift. When you’re not here, I play your piano, just for me. And Reggie, I guess. I miss the way that I could make pianos speak, and a little part of me regrets giving that up. But then I remember everything I went through to get away from it, and that makes me feel bad, too. It’s a vicious cycle.”

“I get it,” Julie said. “People said the same thing to me after my mom died. My memories of making music with her were all good ones, but they were painful to think about after I lost her. Everyone thought that I was wasting my talent because they didn’t understand how hard it was for me to play. But then I met you guys.” She smiled when she said the last part.

It made Alex smile, too; an expression he never thought he would make while sitting at a piano.

“I realized that making music was something that I needed to do for myself, because I _wanted_ to do it. If I was going to keep my mom’s memory alive, it had to be because I was comfortable and felt ready to do it.” She placed her left hand on the piano keys and began to pluck out a light rhythm; the beginning to _Chopsticks_. She smiled as she watched her hands move on the keys. 

Alex counted the rhythm in his head. Julie’s beat was steady, and when he felt ready, he began to play along with her. They were both smiling.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Alex said after they had played the last note. “I think I was afraid that you would find out I could play, and then want me to play for everyone.”

Julie shook her head, a few of her curls bounced around her face. “I understand you wanting to keep this for yourself. Sometimes it’s good to have things you can do just because _you_ enjoy them, and not because it’s what everyone expects from you.”

A laugh escaped Alex’s throat, because he realized that she was right. _Holy shit_ , maybe he had been overthinking the entire thing. He wasn’t just some teenager in a garage band that was running away from the past - not anymore. No, he was his own person, and if he wanted to do something because he enjoyed it, he could do it for that reason and that reason alone.

“I don’t want to erase the memories I had with my mom,” Julie continued. “But now I have new memories with you guys. And those memories are just as good and meaningful to me as the one’s I have with her.”

“I don’t have that many good memories of playing the piano,” Alex admitted.

“That’s okay,” Julie assured him with a smile. “You can work on making new memories when you’re ready.” She placed both of her hands on the keys and gave him a reassuring look. “Do you know _Heart and Soul_?”

“Who doesn’t?” Alex placed his hands on the keys and broke into a grin as he watched his friend begin the song.

 _She’s right about making new memories_ , he thought to himself. It began to dawn on him that he was making new memories right then, and that those memories felt a lot better than the old ones.

His smile didn’t fade after they were done playing the last note of the song. His chest was brimming with a feeling that he hadn’t experienced in a long time, and he suddenly realized just how much he had missed it.

The feeling gave way to an idea, but one he wasn’t sure if he could act on yet.

Time had passed, but Alex couldn’t be sure how much. (Days? Weeks? Did it really matter when you were dead?) It had been one of his better days, when his anxiety had been dialed to a lower level. Not completely gone – it never was – but so quite that he could almost forget it was there. Willie had made some offhanded comment that had brought Alex’s idea back to him. Before, he would have been scared, but he felt giddy as he led him into the studio.

“I want to show you something.” He pulled out the piano bench and motioned for Willie to take a seat beside him.

Willie sat tentatively, looking between Alex and the piano. “Do you play?”

“Sometimes,” Alex admitted. “I don’t like to play in front of people, but Julie and I have been working on a new melody, and I wanted you to be the first to hear it.”

“If you don’t like playing for people, you don’t have to play for me.” Willie placed his hand on the closed fallboard, a message; _you don’t have to open it just for me._

Alex shook his head. “I want to.”

That was one of the things that Alex liked about Willie – he understood how hard it was for Alex to do things. Not like other people, not like his parents, who just expected them to be done. Willie could understand, and that was why Alex wanted to share his music with him.

Willie nodded, letting Alex remove his hand from the piano.

He traced his fingers over the keys and took a deep breath. He gave Willie a nervous glance before he let his fingers fall, arranging a melody that floated from the piano and wrapped itself around the studio as he closed his eyes.

Halfway through, he peeked over at Willie, not sure what reaction he expected from the skater. Willie’s music taste could only be described as “all over the place”, and the song was more of a slow ballad that probably wouldn’t have been his first choice to add to a playlist.

Despite the song not being his type of music, a look of awe was stuck on Willie’s face, and it quickly became a new memory that Alex promised himself he would never forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> One more chapter to go - I hope I don't accidentally make it as sad as the last two, lol

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading my (extremely self-indulgent) fic! I hope you enjoyed, and I hope you find someone who wants to hold your hand :)


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